Miss Lilith
by PickledWinry
Summary: A young woman makes the choice to help Harry Potter when he needs it. It leads both of them down a path they didn't think they would go, including going against a man the world views as a hero.
1. Chapter 1

*St. Grogory's Primary School*

Emily was stirring her coffee with one hand, giving Lilith hard eyes.

"Just because he is different doesn't mean you treat him like that," Miss Emily said. "You know what _he_ said, make him like any other kid."

Lilith gave her a hard look. "Have you seen his clothing? Really, now. I am not treating him any different than any other child."

"I don't see you fawning over his cousin," Emily said.

"Dudley?" Lilith asked. "That _kid_ is an issue. He doesn't do his homework, he bullies other kids, and his father is one of the meanest people I have ever met. He called me sugar when I told him his son was failing out of maths. _Oh Sugar, don't worry, he will be fine when he gets older. Women just aren't good at maths_."

"He is a bit of a bastard," Emily agreed.

"I could have turned him into a cow," Lilith said. She opened her take-out box and took a bite. "If he tries to hit on me again, I am walking out. The money is not worth listening to that fat worthless Muggle call me inferior."

Emily took a long sip of her coffee. She didn't know how people in England liked tea better. Coffee gave a kick where it was needed. Tea was boring and plain and not worth its weight in gold.

Lilith watched her friend and sighed. "It's been almost 11 years, he's going to go back soon. If he isn't broken already," she whispered. "He's not old news, not in the world-But he is going to drown in that family. They will destroy him if they can. I have heard the mother, calling him an abomination."

Emily looked up sharply. "Did you follow him home again?" she demanded.

"They thought I was a dog," she said.

"You know better than that," Emily chided, gently.

The younger woman was filled with a lot of compassion. She didn't know how Albus Dumbledore worked. The man would have her gone in a second if he knew-the pity she had for that little boy, Lilith would be sent to some other location to watch rich kids learn to fly on a broom.

"I want to help him," Lilith said. "He's so skinny and-Why would he send that kid to those people?"

Emily paused. It was nothing short of _magic_ that Albus had been allowed to send Harry Potter anywhere that wasn't to a magical family. Some laws were meant to be broken and this might be one of them. Still, Lilith was young, only 23. She would have been a First Year when Voldemort fell. And it showed in her carefully constructed bravery.

"Do you know anything about him?" Becky asked. "About why he was sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle?"

"No."

"Then it might be best to let people who do run the show. I agree those people are terrible, but not useless." Emily smiled.

The bell rang and the women stood up.

Outside in the hallway, both women took a deep breath. It was time for class.


	2. Chapter 2

*St. Grogory's Primary School*

Lilith was watching break when she heard the children start to scream. There was a circle of urchins on the basketball court.

"Move, move!" Lilith said. "What is going on here?"

One of the little girls, Jude Mayers, speaks up. Lilith felt instant dislike well within her. Jude, like Dudley, had the same sticky black aura around their heads, a sign of a corrupt person. Children could often be even darker than adults. She had seen it herself.

"Luke was playing and Harry slammed the ball right in his face," Jude said.

"Is that why Harry's glasses are broken?" Lilith asked. "I do not like liars, Miss Mayers, and you are lying. I saw the whole thing happen and I am ashamed at your behavior."

She looked at the other children. "Now what really happened?"

No one said anything. They didn't want to deal with Jude turning on them. With a sigh, Lilith grabbed Luke by the arm and pulled him from the crowd. "I want you to stand right here and not move. If I have to come find you, it will be detention for a week," she snapped.

The rest of the kids scattered, going to the edges of the playground in groups of three and four. Lilith helped Harry to his feet.

The little boy was too light, a lanky stick of a child. His glasses were broken at the nose.

"What happened?" Lilith asked.

Luke tried to speak up, but her narrowed glare stopped him.

"I was trying to walk past and they just... threw the ball at my face," Harry said softly. He looked like he expected to be hit for telling the truth. Lilith sighed.

"I see. I am going to let you get back to class, Harry," Lilith said. "Luke here is going to be paying for new glasses out of his pocket money. I know his mother, she is very understanding."

Harry looked horrified. There was a pop and the glasses seemed to right themselves. There were no longer broken, like a brand new pair just delivered. "That is not needed."

Lilith manuvered her body so Luke could not see. "I guess they were just crooked. Lucky Luke," Lilith said.

Luke nodded.

"Well, I need someone to sweep the gym," Lilith said. "And Luke just volunteered for the next week."

Luke didn't protest.

When Harry scampered off, Lilith knelt down in front of Luke. She let the coyote in her flush her face. Her eyes went yellow, for just a moment. "Now, if you touch that child again, I am going to make you suffer," Lilith said. "And you know I can."

Luke flew away from her like he was on fire. "Yes, yes Miss Lilith, yes," he said.

"Good, now go back to class. It's time for English."


	3. Lilith-- Past

*Maria Montessori School of Magic and Learning*

*Masstree, California*

Lilith had gone by Lily most of her life. It was something people just did naturally in America. The name Lilith seemed almost forbidden. Or they called her Judith. When she corrected people, it seemed to just annoy them, so she let it be.

Her school had been pretty small for the area. It had a single room for each grade and the kids went home by chimney every night. Lilith was one of the few who was local, taking a bus home or riding with a teacher. She lived almost two miles away, in an area populated by Muggles and their magical children.

To most people, it looked like a series of farms. Their eyes would pass over the dead orange trees and the smell of cows. No one really wanted to spend their time digging cow shit out of their shoes, so they usually kept away. Sometimes kids would try to enter, but the Confundus charm would send them going back home, certain their mother needed something.

Lilith lived in a small blue house with her Muggle mother, her Wizard father, and her sister, Inanna. While both girls attended magical schools, Inanna went to Hollyhill School of the Magical Arts. She had shown great talent as a painter of moving portraits. She rarely left the boarding school and would send home small doodles, as presents, for Lilith to enjoy.

Despite the three year difference between the girls-Inanna being the eldest-they shared a similar humor and love of magic. It wasn't surprising that Lilith and Inanna were close, their parents normally forbade them from hanging out with anyone else outside the community. There was a fear of the unknown in Mary Louise, her Southern Baptist upbringing making her fearful of anything unknown.

It didn't take Lilith long to realize her mother, while loving and supportive, felt she was, in part, a demon of some kind. Touched by a darkness. How Melville Streets sold his wife on two witchy daughters, Lilith would never know. Still, it wasn't a bad childhood. It wasn't a bad home. It was just lonely.

Still, Lilith had _enough friends._ There was Bekka Southerland next door. They both spent evenings together studying, despite being a grade apart in school. There was Erica and Rachelle Powell, down the road, who shared their dirt bikes in the summer.

Still, Lilith wasn't exactly the most normal child. She tended to attract strange people to her. Montessori encouraged 'native arts' such as aura reading and Dreamwalking. Most of the kids thought this was stupid, but Lilith had always been able to see colors floating hazily around others. It was this _talent_ that singled her out as different.

The only other person who seemed convinced she was telling the truth was Steven Lime. Everyone in the class called him Slime and refused to have anything to do with him unless needed. Lilith felt they were being a little unfair, as his condition wasn't really his fault.

His mother claimed to have _Cherokee blood._ Which was really just a way of feeling superior to other, more mainstream witches. If she were a Native Witch, her kids would be in a really nice school up North. Crow College or Coyote Valley National School.

It was _her insistence_ that Slime had to be a Walker that turned the class on him. Slime seemed to be stuck between human and canine. He had oversized teeth, his nose was mishappened, and his hands seemed to fluctuate between twisted and normal. Some days he came to school completely normal, others he was knotted at the spine and hissing in pain. It was Slime that Lilith liked best among her classmates, if only for his uncanny ability to know when others were upset, lonely.

He saw the same colors, but he knew what they meant. Almost instinctually. He was willing to share his knowledge with Lilith. While the other children stayed away from him, Lilith spent their hour of free time glaring off into the distance, trying to capture the meaning of a black aura or a yellow streak.

He also told her about his mother. Ilianna Hill was almost crazy enough to be infamous in town. She insisted on working in a Muggle doctor's office, answering phones and sorting mail. Things that none of the other Muggle mothers would do. The moment they had magical children, they were allowed into a new world. They were given better opportunities and some didn't even bother working.

Ilianna was different and Lilith met Ilianna, the woman insisted upon calling her Lilith, something no one else did. She also looked Lilith in the eyes, nodded her head, and smiled a really deep smile. It felt almost homely.

But there were things Lilith disliked about Ilianna. Her insistence that Slime is anything other than what he was bothered her. Instead of signing up for 'shape-shifting' classes like normal people, Ilianna had her son performing painful amateur bullshit in their home.

Ilianna was hard to understand and harder to full hate. Still, Lilith would bring up his problems when they were alone. Slime didn't seem to mind. He just said his mother knew best and that he didn't need to go to classes. If he wanted to fully change, he would one day. But right now he didn't know if he even wanted to be a canine.

"How do you pick?" Lilith asked. "I always heard it picked you."

"That's because no one really knows what animal they want to be," Slime said. He jerked his spine back into place and his face looked almost human. "England has a lot backward."

"England has the leading schools of magic," Lilith said. "And we would be lucky to attend them."

"Not with that dude," Slime said. "They have a problem with bigots."

Lilith snorted. "Like we don't?"

"We do. But they have a problem with _our kind_ and I don't think you want that on you."

He had a point.

Lilith went back to her lunch.

xxx

When Summer came, Lilith went to High Top Magical Camp in Nevada. It was a weird place, filled with hiking and levitation spells. A lot of the time she was left alone to her devices.

For six weeks she went by Lila, a compromise that sounded more natural than Lily. She was fourteen and wanted to be different. If no one would call her Lilith, then she would make her own identity.

She learned useful spells to clean up her room, to make her hair sleek, to clear up acne. She even learned some wandless spells for making the room cooler or turning a page in a book. Anything more than that, and it was breaking Student Advancement Laws.

She was too young for wandless magic. And she wasn't much good at it anyway. It was advanced stuff that took years of college to master. She didn't even manage to turn a whole page without collapsing into a pile of sweat.

But when she went back, she was taller, leaner, and ready to head to High School. Montessori was getting new students and she was off to Grove High, a small magic school on the edge of town. It was where they sent the Muggle Borns, the Half-Bloods. Even California had its own problems and with things the way they had been for so long, it was better to separate people out.

When she saw Slime, he looked vastly different. He claimed he had given up on the transformations his mother insisted on. Ilianna didn't seem upset, so she doubted he had stopped altogether. Just gotten better, maybe?

Still, something had happened over the summer and Steve didn't seem inclined to tell her. She would ask, but he would remain silent. IF anything, he seemed more interested in his new life as a high schooler. They were allowed outside of school training wands and brooms, something they never got before.

And he didn't seem to meet her eyes. He didn't offer lessons in aura reading. He just seemed to have brushed by her over the summer. It bothered her, and she hated feeling ignored.

Still, he seemed happy.

And she wanted him to be happy.


End file.
